Tony D’Souza

"Mule is the sort of novel I love: it solves nothing while explaining everything."—Walter Kirn, author of Up In The Air

From an award-winning "savvy storyteller"* comes a page-turning, zeitgeist-capturing novel of a young couple who turn to drug trafficking to make it through the recession. Absorbing and timely, Mule perfectly captures the anxieties of plunging into the criminal world and of being a young person in a moment when the American Dream you never had to believe in suddenly vanishes from the menu.*Entertainment Weekly

The Eric Volz Case

In October 2006, Tony left Florida in his Ford Ranger for an adventure in Central America. Six weeks later in San Juan Del Sur, Nicaragua, local beauty Doris Jimenez was murdered, and her American ex-boyfriend Eric Volz was arrested and charged with the crime. Tony happened to be passing through, and spent the next five months in San Juan covering the story. He gained access to the case file, was the only foreign journalist to attend the complete trial, and interviewed Volz in Tipitapa’s Modelo penitentiary. Despite threats, Tony began detailing Volz’s innocence and unjust conviction, helping bring wide US media attention to the case. His 10,000 word feature article was nominated by Outside for a National Magazine Award in Reporting. Tony talked about the issue when he appeared on a Today Show segment, a Dateline interview, and an Outside Magazine Interview Podcast.

Tony's Project in Japan

About Tony

Tony D’Souza was born and raised in Chicago, graduating from St. Ignatius high school. After a summer bicycling alone across Alaska, he attended Carthage College in Kenosha, WI, interned for a DC defense policy think tank, worked construction in Europe and the Middle East, and completed Masters degrees in writing from Hollins University and the University of Notre Dame. Tony then served three years in the Peace Corps in West Africa and Madagascar, where he was a rural AIDS educator, witnessing the outbreak of civil war in Ivory Coast.

Tony has contributed to The New Yorker, Playboy, Salon, Mother Jones, Esquire, Outside, Granta, the O.Henry Awards, Best American Fantasy, McSweeney's, Tin House, Amazon and elsewhere, and has appeared on Dateline, The Today Show, A&E’s Bill Kurtis Investigates, E! Channel’s Locked Up Overseas, the BBC, NPR, and many other venues. He received an NEA, an NEA Japan Friendship Fellowship, a Guggenheim, holds Florida Gold and Silver Medals in Fiction, was nominated by Outside for a National Magazine Award in Reporting, and earned prizes from the California Newspaper Publishers Association including a First Place in Environmental Reporting, and a Blue Ribbon for Best Writing.

Tony's first novel, Whiteman, received the Sue Kaufman Prize from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. His second novel, The Konkans, was called a ‘best novel of the year’ by the Washington Post, Christian Science Monitor, and Poets & Writers Magazine. His third novel, Mule, released in September, 2011, to advance praise from Vanity Fair, Gawker, Kirkus, Booklist, and Library Journal. Tony makes regular speaking appearances. He is represented by Maura Kye-Casella of Don Congdon Associates, NY, NY.